The winners of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals have been announced at a ceremony at The British Library, hosted by broadcaster and writer Konnie Huq.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (Electric Monkey) has been awarded the Carnegie Medal, while Jackie Morris has won the Kate Greenaway Medal for The Lost Words written by Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton). The awards were judged by 14 volunteer Youth Librarians, with the winners selected from over 254 nominations this year.

The Poet X is Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel while Jackie Morris was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2016 for Something About a Bear. The winners each receive £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice, a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize.

This is the second time in four years that a verse novel has won the Carnegie Medal, following Sarah Crossan’s One in 2016. Acevedo conceived The Poet X whilst working as an English teacher at a secondary school in Maryland, USA. The daughter of Dominican immigrants, she realised that few of the books she had been teaching contained characters of colour, and that this feeling of being unseen consequently led to a marked disinterest in reading.

Closing her acceptance speech with an empowering poem celebrating girls of colour, Acevedo said: ‘I think we should have poetry in every room as much as possible, and because I fundamentally believe in Dr Rudine Sims Bishop’s words that children’s literature should be a mirror and a window.’

The Lost Words was born in response to the removal of everyday nature words, such as ‘acorn’, ‘bluebell’, ‘kingfisher’ and ‘wren’, from a widely used children’s dictionary on the basis that they were not being used enough by children to merit inclusion.

In her speech, Jackie Morris, said: ‘The times ahead are challenging. It seems to me that artists, writers, musicians have one job at the moment – to help to tell the truth about what is happening to this small and fragile world we inhabit, to re-engage with the natural world, to inspire and to imagine better ways to live. Because there is no Planet B and we are at a turning point. And because in order to make anything happen it first needs to be imagined. And as writers and illustrators for children we grow the readers and thinkers of the future.

‘I’m learning so much as I watch our young people call politicians to account. Together we can make a change. And we must. While politicians nod and pretend to listen to Greta Thunberg, declare Climate Emergencies, then continue with ‘business as usual’ finding money always for bombs and seldom for books we need to stand beside these children and hold our deceitful leaders to account.’

In a speech that paid tribute to the recently departed John Burningham and Judith Kerr, Chair of judges Alison Brumwell praised the immeasurable, lasting impact children’s books and illustration have on our minds, both as young people and later as adults.

In a first for the Medals, the winners of The Shadowers’ Choice Award – voted for and awarded by members of the 4,500 school reading groups who shadow the Medals – were also announced at the ceremony.

This new award evolved out of CILIP’s recent Diversity Review, which identified opportunities to empower and celebrate the young people involved in the Medals through the shadowing scheme by giving them a more significant voice and visible presence in the process and prize giving.

In recognition of the 30th Anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 17-year-old Serena Jemmett, a young activist for Amnesty International UK, also spoke at the ceremony about the importance of young people’s right to a voice.